The present invention relates to a server that contains four juxtaposed hard disk drives and particularly a server that conforms to industrial standard 1U19 inch specifications.
The commonly used industrial servers are generally modularly configured for housing in a server cabinet with a width of 19 inches. There is an industry accepted common standard that defines a cubic dimension of 19xc3x9719xc3x971.75 inches (for lengthxc3x97widthxc3x97height) as a base unit which is generally called 1U server specification. This standard facilitates modular design and makes configuration more convenient. However the rapid development and progress of high speed networks in recent years create great demands for hard disk drive quantity in the server and motherboard and interface function. To meet these requirements, industry has developed more server specifications based on the 1U specifications, such as 2U server specifications that have the height of 3 inches, and 3U server specifications that have the height of 4.5 inches. There are even 4U and 5U server specifications that have even more housing space.
However there is also an increasing awareness in the industry that more server specifications such as 2U, 3U might help to increase housing apace for servers but does not always achieve more effective space utilization in the servers. It could even result in more space waste. The main problem is that server space utilization in the existing 1U specifications has reached a bottleneck. In the past, 1U server has an inner housing width of 17 inches (43.18 cm) and can accommodate maximum three sets of retrievable hard disk drives in a juxtaposed manner with a physical size of 4 inches (10.16 cm) wide to contain a hard disk drive of a standard width of 3.5 inches. Trying to accommodate four sets of retrievable hard disk drives in a juxtaposed manner in the 1U server cabinet has practical problem. As only one inch of space will be spared after four hard disk drives are housed in the server cabinet (17 inxe2x88x924 inxc3x974 in=1 in=2.54 cm), and to install the retrieval mechanism in an one inch space is very difficult.
The technology innovation in recent years has created new techniques that allow four sets of retrieval hard disk drives housed in a 1U server. In order to facilitate partition assembly and add slide rails, the partition is formed in a xe2x80x9cIxe2x80x9d shape. Such a design cannot be fitted into a cabinet inner space of 17 inches. Hence total cabinet width has to be increased to compensate the additional inner space required. Such a change affects the width of slide rails installed on two sides of the server cabinet, and the commonly used standard 10 mm steel ball slide rail cannot be used. As a result, special slide rails have to be made. It increases the cost and is not well accepted by consumers.
The primary object of the invention is resolve aforesaid disadvantages. The invention mainly utilizes an U-shaped partition to replace conventional I-shaped partition to reduce the width of single side. The casing has bent latch elements formed by punching to match latch slots formed on the partition to give the partition structure desired strength. The partitioned retrieval space contains a retrieval cradle which has single side board to save space. By means of the techniques provided by the invention, the server of 1U 19 inches specifications can house four retrievable hard disk drives of standard 3.5 inches in a juxtaposed manner.
Another object of the invention is to reduce the interval of two adjacent retrieval spaces through improved partition assembly method and retrieval cradle design so that the server of 1U specifications that has the inner width of 17 inches can concurrently accommodate four sets of retrievable hard disk drives.
A further object of the invention is to use partitions to divide four housing chambers for hard disk drives to contain retrieval cradles that are used to hold the retrievable hard disk drives, thereby the server inner space of 1U specifications can be fully utilized, and standard 10 mm steel ball slide rails can be used and installed on two sides of the server without the need of specially made slide rails.
Yet another object of the invention is to save the width of the retrieval slide rails for the hard disk drives and to reduce the height of the casing, and to include an additional partition on the hard disk for mounting super thin floppy disk drives and optical disk drives adopted to portable computers on the partition thereby to allow the server to equip full function.
The foregoing, as well as additional objects, features and advantages of the invention will be more readily apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.
Further scope of the applicability of the present invention will become apparent from the detailed description given hereinafter. However, it should be understood that the detailed description and specific examples, while indicating preferred embodiments of the invention, are given by way of illustration only, since various changes and modifications within the spirit and scope of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this detailed description.